


Anything for Love

by Naite_Laef



Series: Allure [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Domestic Violence, F/M, Gen, Love/Hate, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Pre-Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Search Comics (Avatar), Trans Zuko (Avatar), Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29822448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naite_Laef/pseuds/Naite_Laef
Summary: Ozai would do anything for his wife.Or: Sometimes, hurt people hurt other people.
Relationships: Ozai & Zuko (Avatar), Ozai/Ursa (Avatar)
Series: Allure [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006965
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	Anything for Love

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Allure series, but if you ignore the Trans Zuko tag, you can read this as a standalone. 
> 
> Trigger warnings: Toxic relationship, including a controlling and violent spouse.

Their wedding was a quiet affair. Ursa looked stunning, of course; her hair had been braided and wrapped around the back of her head, and styled with two jewels on either side of her ears. Her lips were a glossy red, and the upper part of her eyes were lightly lined with kohl. Atop her head, around the base of her braid, sat her crown.

Despite her upbringing, she was stunning, and downright regal. She showed no emotion, quiet and demure; precisely what Ozai wanted in a wife. She only smiled once on their wedding day, and when it was directed towards him, he found his breath catching.

“You have lovely parents,” he’d told her. She smiled- a small, proud smile- and replied, “They’ve always been good to me.”

“Be sure to tell them that when you say goodbye,” he said, pausing to take a sip of his sake. “Your last words should be filled with gratitude and kindness, so their memory of you will always be sweet.” And a sweet girl, she was. Utterly naive, too, though that would be fixed in time.

“Last words?” she echoed him, dainty brow furrowed in confusion.

“As a princess of the Fire Nation, you must sever all ties to your past,” he said, watching with a calm detachment as her eyes widened in realisation. “You belong to the royal family now.” He leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, her skin smooth and powdery against his lips. “And to _me_.” 

They made a child soon after their first night together. Ursa was inexperienced, but Ozai didn’t mind. In fact, the knowledge that he was the only man she’d ever been with so intimately- her first and last and only- set something alight within him. Her body was smooth porcelain, laid bare for him to take, and so he did.

Their firstborn did not have the spark. She was, however, was later proven to be a firebender, so Ozai had graciously allowed the child to live. Zuko was a precocious girl- a little too loud, a little too interested in everything. She began walking weeks early, and spoke in complete sentences months before the usual milestone. She was his child, of that there was no doubt. He would even go as far as to say he was proud of her. She represented the best of his union to Ursa, and he cared for her greatly. Even as he gained yet another daughter, his affection for Zuko grew like mold- utterly unwanted, permeating every wall he'd worked to build over the decades. 

Everything changed after Zuko’s fifth birthday.

He’d been training when he heard the scuffle of Elua’s lame foot across the tiles.

“What are you doing here?” he said flatly, wiping the sweat from his cheekbones with the towel around his neck. 

“Forgive my intrusion, Fire Prince Ozai.” He turned to see her thin hands shaking, proffering a folded letter before him, her back hunched from age and fear. “The latest letter from your wife, addressed to her hometown.”

“I asked you to file those away from me,” he said, disinterested, and above all else, annoyed.

“Yes… but this one is different from the others!” she quickly told him, voice low. “Here, Ursa reveals a secret that- that requires my prince’s immediate attention.”

He could not mask the curiosity welling beneath his skin, and he certainly didn’t miss how the servant’s voice quivered when she spoke. He took the note from her.

He read it.

He crumpled it in his rage.

Once he was suitably dressed, he quickly made the rounds through his connections. Before nightfall, a Yuyan Archer was on his way to Hira’a. Ikem would be dead within the week.

He then tracked down Ursa, who was being readied for bed in the Royal Spa. "Leave me with my wife,” he barked at the servant women. “My words are for her alone.” Yet, he couldn’t hold his composure while the servants seemingly took their time leaving the room. No, he instantly rounded on the woman in question, grabbing her by the wrist and yanking her out of her chair. She yelped in surprise and pain. “On our wedding day, I told you to forget your old life! Who you are is now entirely defined by your marriage to me,” he snarled. He watched, both amused and angered by the fire in her eyes. What right did she have to be so defensive? And a nonbender with such passion... who would have thought he’d ever grow to care for such a worthless whore.

“I knew it!” she exclaimed, brows pinched with fury. “I knew you were intercepting my letters! How dare you?!”

He glanced about the room, and sure enough, the women that had been attending to Ursa were now long gone. He lowered his voice anyway, his tone dangerously cold. “Even worse, evidence of your treason lives under this very roof!”

“Ozai, don’t be a fool,” she huffed, not meeting his eye. Her arms were crossed, as though to comfort herself. People were so predictable. So easy to read.

How had Ozai not seen this coming?

“But I am a merciful man,” he declared, a sinister grin creeping onto his lips. “I will allow the child to live, despite the lowliness of her true heritage.” Merciful, indeed, as he had already sentenced the brat to death once before. He would not hesitate to do so again, if need be. It would... Not be ideal. Bur he could learn to live with it. “Ikem, however- Ikem deserved his punishment.”

And just as he knew she would, she spun around, eyes wild with fear, arms stretched out, as if to reach for him. “What did you do?” she cried out. He knew her- knew this would be her reaction, considering all that he’d learned just hours prior- but it didn’t hurt any less. No, the pain lancing through his chest, straight across his heart only made him more furious. He was not weak. He would not allow her to control what he felt.

Still. To see how she spoke of that peasant- she never spoke about Ozai that way.

So, it was with great pleasure that he told her, “I wiped that treacherous dog from existence.”

Her tears fell fast and freely. Part of him did not want to see it. Part of him only wanted to see more.

“Ozai, how could you?” she practically screamed. “You know as well as I that Zuko is your daughter!”

He took her outstretched hand, wrenching it from the space between them, and he twisted it to the side. She spasmed in pain, a low grunt echoing from her throat. She was right, though. He’d had Ursa’s every move tracked months before Fire Lord Azulon had taken him down to Hira’a. He knew there was no way she had lain with her childhood sweetheart. And over the course of their marriage, he continued to have eyes on her. The stronger his attraction to Ursa became, the more jealous and paranoid of a man he turned into. The more attached he grew- the more that something in his chest tightened and tingled and fluttered every time he so much as thought of her-

Ozai was not afraid of anything. He was only _concerned_ that she would regret marrying him. That she would wake up one day and no longer look at him with the fondness she always tried to hide. Their relationship was strained at times, yes, but that was on par with arranged marriages. Regardless of whether or not they actually liked each other, what they have was real. He knew it was- it had to be. He was only concerned that her feelings for him would not be enough to keep her by his side for the rest of their lives.

Realistically, he knew he had nothing to worry about. He was a prince. He was powerful, and in more ways than one. He was charming and he was handsome. He should have had nothing to worry about, but worry he had. It was emotional- it was irrational. His concerns made him weak, just as his feelings for her have lessened him as a man. Yet he cannot stray from her magnetic pull. Staying aloof, staying distant, was never an option. So, he tightened the leash. Slowly, so she wouldn’t take notice.

One day, without either of them noticing, the leash became a noose.

“Why write such an obvious lie?” he demanded, shouting as well.

“Maybe I wanted to see if you were reading my private letters!” she screamed, tears streaming down her face. “Maybe I wanted to hurt you, even for just a moment!”

Hurt him.

His body grew cold and numb. The fire within him wanted to explode- wanted to consume everything in its path- even Ursa. But it died down, too shocked to act.

“Maybe it was just my wishful thinking,” she said, voice lowered, as if an afterthought.

Through gritted teeth, he asked in a deathly calm voice, “Is that truly what you wish? That Zuko were not mine?”

“So that she turns out nothing like you? So that neither of our girls do?" she said, firm in her resolve. “Yes.”

Slowly, he released her wrist from his grip, and although his eyes never left Ursa’s, he knew she would have bruises to hide come tomorrow morning. After a moment, he said, “Then that’s how I’ll treat her, dear wife,” spitting out the term of endearment with all the venom in his soul. “I want you to watch very carefully from now on.” He stepped closer, glee overtaking him as her eyes widened in fear and desperation. “Every time I speak harshly to her- every time I wound her- every time I treat Zuko as if she were the daughter of a treacherous bastard and his whore-”

Her breath caught.

“I will simply be fulfilling her mother’s wish.”

Ozai would do anything for his wife. And as much as it hurt him, he wanted to hurt her, too.

Ozai would do anything for his wife.

Even this.


End file.
